Friday, 22 November 2013

Strangely enough, wandering on in the Internet I casually found this promising project lead by Rebecca Benefiel: The Ancient Graffiti Project

"The website provides a search engine for locating and studying graffiti of the early Roman empire from the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Ancient graffiti, inscriptions that have been incised or scratched
into wall-plaster, comprise a special branch of epigraphy. They differ
from inscriptions on stone in several respects. An inscription on stone
may be commemorative, dedicatory, sacred (to name just a few classes of
inscription), but in almost all cases forethought has gone into the
preparation of the text and the inscribed monument. Graffiti, by
contrast, are more often the result of spontaneous composition and are
the handwritten creation of the “man on the street.” Since graffiti are
scratched into friable wall-plaster, they are more easily perishable,
but when they do survive they are almost always found in-situ, unlike
many stone inscriptions that have survived to the present day through
re-use".